Rick Santorum, Master Of The Anti-Gay Analogy

August 11, 2011 4:23 pm ET
- by Kate Conway

Rick Santorum just thought of a great new way to explain why
same-sex marriage shouldn't be legal, and he's been proudly showing off his rationale to voters and reporters around the country. Delighted by his newfound discovery of analogies, Santorum has been running around like an SAT practice book, telling anyone who
will listen that marriage is like tea,
and marriage is like water,
and marriage is like a
napkin. Just for the record, marriage is definitely not like basketball or beer or paper towels.

Here's an example of Santorum's logical mastery:

SANTORUM: It's like saying this glass
of water is a glass of beer. Well, you can call it a glass of beer, but it's
not a glass of beer. It's a glass of water. And water is what water is.
Marriage is what marriage is.

And
another:

SANTORUM: I can say that marriage
is what marriage— marriage existed before government existed. This is a napkin.
I can call this napkin a paper towel, but it is a napkin. Why? Because it is
what it is. Right? You can call it whatever you want, but it doesn't change the
character of what it is. Sort of the metaphysical. Right?

And according to MSNBC, Santorum tripled up during an Iowa
campaign stop, "saying that calling same-sex marriage a marriage
would be like calling a cup of tea a basketball."

Santorum's point in all this is that granting gay people the
same rights that straight people already enjoy would constitute a redefinition
of an immutable concept. Of course, you only have to look as far as the Old
Testament (polygamy!) to realize that marriage has long been an institution in
flux, and that strictures placed upon it are heavily dependent on cultural and
temporal context.

The "it's always been this way" argument rarely
holds water, and illustrating it with imagery of tea and napkins does little to
make it more convincing as popular opinion swings ever
more in favor of gay marriage.